Political scientist and media critic

November 29, 2006

Hotsoup continues third party hype

The useless Hotsoup.com is still trying to generate PR by getting its big-name founders to exaggerate the unlikely third party threat in 2008.

I wrote about it last month when Hotsoup's Joe Lockhart and Mark McKinnon published an op-ed in which they described an alleged "disenchanted middle" that is "ripe for the plucking by a third-party insurgency in 2008."

Co-founder Ron Fournier has now published an MSNBC.com column quoting the same two alleged experts going even further. Here's the statement attributed to Joe Lockhart:

If 2008 rolls around and not much has changed, the caucuses and primaries descend into their normal petty bickering and negative ads and debates, a new force will inevitably take shape. There has been much talk throughout our history of third parties. But it’s been mostly talk. Every three or four decades we have a challenge to our two-party system, a challenge that recedes as quickly as it came along.

2008 could be different. There are too many structural reasons to go into that make a third-party candidacy more legitimate in 2008. Suffice it to say; those structural differences mixed in with the mood of the country create a toxic brew for our two-party system.

If "the caucuses and primaries descend into their normal petty bickering and negative ads and debates, a new force will inevitably take shape"? "[I]nevitably"? What mysterious "structural reasons" could possibly justify a statement like that? For the reasons I've outlined numerous times, a successful third party candidacy for the presidency is implausible. For that reason, no one serious is likely to run.

In the piece, Fournier then quotes McKinnon:

If things keep going they way they have been, 2008 may make the voter of 1992 look like a bunch of happy campers. The time could be more than ripe for another third-party bid, especially if centrist, bipartisan candidates like McCain and Obama get bounced from their respective primaries.

All it will take is someone who understands just how hungry voters are for a third way. Someone with a lot of ambition and smarts. And someone with a whole lot of money. Wait, this sounds a lot like Mayor Mike Bloomberg in New York.

That’s right; Mike Bloomberg could be the Ross Perot of 2008. And I believe he’s not just thinking about it, but has some very talented aides cooking up plans in laboratory in the bowels of Gotham City. If he’s smart, he’ll wait to see how the primaries shake out, find the best person to lead the ticket, make himself the vice presidential candidate (which he has to do in order to fund the effort), and off they’ll go shake up the great race in 2008.

Is this all Hotsoup has to contribute -- third party speculation from the founders? What about the sage wisdom of their readers? Oh, wait: